RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18713/russia-nato

The alliance’s new Strategic Concept, adopted at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, focuses on addressing the return of great-power politics, specifically strategic competition with revisionist powers such as Russia and China.

The Strategic Concept affirms collective territorial defense as NATO’s fundamental mission, and effective deterrence as its main objective.

“The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area…. Its coercive military posture, rhetoric and proven willingness to use force to pursue its political goals undermine the rules-based international order…. In light of its hostile policies and actions, we cannot consider the Russian Federation to be our partner.” — NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

The 2022 Concept also assesses, for the first time, the “challenges” — France and Germany objected to describing China as a “threat” because it was seen as harmful to European economic interests — posed by Communist Party of China.

Finally, the 2022 Concept commits NATO member states to honor previous pledges on defense spending, but there is no enforcement mechanism.

“The February invasion led to promises for even more spending, but many countries remain disappointments. Last month Germany approved a special €100 billion fund to rearm but still won’t commit to meeting the spending pledge every year. Italy said in March it will hit 2% by 2028, and Belgium managed to be even more hapless with a vow to reach the goal by 2035. Will Mr. Biden do anything to push these laggards in Madrid?” — Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2022.

“If NATO fails to translate words into action now, it could be fatal for the Alliance.” — Ed Arnold, Royal United Services Institute, July 1, 2022.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), responding to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, has announced the biggest overhaul of European defense since the end of the Cold War. By pledging more money, more troops and more unity to deter Russia, NATO leaders have reaffirmed NATO as the cornerstone of transatlantic defense.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18714/shinzo-abe

Perhaps Abe’s most enduring contribution to the Japanese people was successfully to mold their thinking into accepting a greater responsibility for Free World defense.

Abe’s calm demeanor, diplomatic comportment and clarity of thought on strategic security issues helped enable the rapid evolution of the “QUAD” alliance (US, Japan, Australia and India) into a formidable bulwark against Chinese Communist expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.

Abe’s most significant contribution to strengthening security in the Indo-Pacific Region may yet materialize: to amend Japan’s post World War II Constitution to allow Tokyo more aggressively to project military power in the South and East China Seas. Such as addition would be a great boost to Free Asia’s hope to keep the Indo-Pacific secure and free. It is to be hoped that all countries in the region will follow in Abe’s extraordinary footsteps.

Shinzo Abe, the most influential Japanese leader since World II, ushered in accomplishments that were transformative both in Japan’s role as a democratic power in the Indo-Pacific Region and as a dynamic player in international affairs. His aggressive initiatives on defense issues significantly strengthened the US-Japanese Alliance, just as China’s expansionist aspirations in the South and East China Seas were peaking; he continued to push for an increase in Japan’s defense budget right up to his assassination.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/mullah-mischief-latin-america-joseph-puder/

Iran and its primary terror agent, Hezbollah, are a threat not only to the security of Israel and the Arab Gulf states — their tentacles stretch across the globe. In Latin America, Iran is building a strategic response against the United States with a protected base in Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduro. Iran’s build-up of long-range ballistic missiles, and the Russian supply of the lethal S-400 missile system to Iran, pose a serious threat to the security of the United States. These Russian missiles will eventually end up in Venezuela. Russia is poised to retaliate against the U.S. supply of missiles to Ukraine, by arming both Iran and Venezuela with the S-400 missile system.

With the Biden administration’s desperate quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, it is crucial now more than ever for Washington to include Iran’s long-range ballistic missile development onto the nuclear talks agenda among other forums. The Ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran may eventually drop their demand for lifting the U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), since they already have cleverly deceived the western powers by deliberately buying time to be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for several bombs. Robert Malley, the U.S. envoy to the Vienna nuclear negotiations with Iran, recently warned that Iran can “make a nuclear bomb within a matter of weeks.”

Last March, the Biden administration flirted with lifting oil sanctions on Venezuela in order to temper surging oil prices. White House and State Department officials traveled to Caracas, Venezuela to meet with the anti-American President Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator. It seemed as if the Biden administration was willing to fund a ruthless dictator, who is serving Iran’s strategic interests in facilitating an IRGC forward military base against the U.S. At the same time, however, the Biden administration is unwilling to encourage investments in domestic energy production.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18683/world-health-organization

“The alarming amendments offered by the Biden Administration to the WHO’s International Health Regulations would grant new unilateral authority to [WHO] Director-General Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States or other sovereign nations, without any consultation with the U.S. or any other WHO member. Specifically, the Biden Amendment would strike the current regulation that requires the WHO to ‘consult with and attempt to obtain verification from the State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring in,’ ceding the United States’ ability to declare and respond to an infectious disease outbreak within the United States, dependent on the judgment of a corrupt and complicit UN bureaucracy.” — Rep. Chris Smith, ranking member of the House Global Health Subcommittee, May 18, 2022.
The delay was declared by some to be a huge win…. I believe that the time will be used to develop and market even more diabolical policies. Now is not the time to take a victory lap, it is the time to be ever vigilant.
Similar to the U.S. Disinformation Board that the Department of Homeland Security recently proposed, the WHO would now also be empowered to combat supposed disinformation and misinformation. It is disconcerting that governmental institutions and international organizations are seeking the power and public resources to combat what they determine to be misinformation; it is a development that should concern us all.
The Biden Administration, alarmingly, with its proposed 13 amendments, wanted to give this power to an international organization with no transparency, no accountability to the U.S. or anyone else, and an abysmal track record. Most conspicuously, it disregarded warnings from Taiwan about the human-to-human transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus, and instead colluded with the Chinese Communist Party in lying to the world about the danger of the virus while the CCP shut down domestic travel but encouraged foreign travel.
Expectations are already being created for what the result of these actions will be: unsettlingly, they seek to expand on the authorities the Biden Administration was prepared to concede to the WHO.
[H]ere are some steps that can and should be taken. A more than solid case can be made that the WHO failed spectacularly in the current crisis. There must be a laser-like focus pointing out how the WHO’s actions were politicized and its recommendations were many times deeply flawed. Further, Americans must demand that Congress do thorough investigations of the WHO and U.S. funding going to the organization. Those should be complemented by continued efforts to encourage more whistleblowers to expose additional shortcomings or scandals involving the WHO.
Will the U.S. maintain control of its well-being and sovereignty, and those of our allies, or put our trust in failed international organizations?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18695/brussels-europe-eurabia

“Molenbeek would love to be forgotten, because it is the very example of the failure of the multicultural society, which remains an untouchable dogma in Belgium”. — Alain Destexhe, honorary Senator in Belgium and former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022.

“[I]n the Brussels region as a whole only a quarter of Belgians are of Belgian origin…. Molenbeek is in fact only the tip of the iceberg of the progressive Islamization in all the major Belgian cities. Islam is increasingly visible in the public space of Molenbeek, and in the month of Ramadan almost all the shops and restaurants in the city are closed during the day. In many neighborhoods, women are no longer able to dress however they want or go out at night, and homosexuals have no right of citizenship. There are, however, hardly any voices to worry about this development, as if French-speaking Belgium, anesthetized in unison by the multicultural media, had resigned itself”. — Alain Destexhe, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022

“Today the Muslim Brotherhood… continues its lobbying and blame games with its imaginary Trojan horse: Islamophobia”. — Assita Kanko, Belgian MEP, who fled Burkina Faso to look for freedom in Europe; Euractive, December 20, 2021

“The aim is clear: normalise radical Islamic codes and ways of life in order gradually to transform our Western societies instead of adapting to our European way of life. As a black woman and a secular Muslim, I know what it is to live under Islamic pressure and I know what it takes to emancipate oneself in order to finally live in dignity…. Europe must urgently pull itself together and reaffirm its commitment to its own values….” — Assita Kanko, Euractive, December 20, 2021.

“Where will we be in 50 years? All of Europe – inshallah – will be Muslim. So, have children!” — Brahim Laytouss, president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Belgium, dhnet.be, March 5, 2019.

The greatest form of cultural racism in Europe today is that of EU elites who censor or support this spectacular change of civilization.

“Of all the European capitals, Brussels is the one through which the Islamist project intends to spread to Europe. Their lobbies are powerful there, so it is much easier for Islamists to break into the system and gradually transform it”. — Djemila Benhabi, Camadian journalist, lecho.com.

“[I]n exchange [for oil], the Saudi king asked the Belgian king Baudouin to grant Arabia a monopoly on representing Islam and appointing imams in Belgium”. The Belgian government officially recognized the Islamic religion. It was the first European country to do so. There followed the inclusion of the Islamic religion in the school curriculum. — Alain Chouet, former “number two” of the DGSE, the French counterintelligence service, from his new book: “Sept pas vers l’enfer” (“Seven Steps to Hell”).

“Eurabia” was born in those years, the years of an energy crisis, European weakness and the great rise of Islam. Sound familiar?

While Lieven Verstraete, an acclaimed Belgian journalist who hosts the program, “De Zevende Dag” (“The Seventh Day”), was recently interviewing two members of the Green Party, he raised the issue of immigration and called Brussels “the perfect example of a city whose neighborhoods are conquered one by one by newcomers”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18693/ukraine-war-unified-command

Soon, the ringside spectators will see that the threat to the world order, or, to be more exact, the international order is bound to affect them in ways that they might not welcome.

In reality… [Zelensky] is not and cannot be [in full command] because he does not control the resources needed for war. He is an effective communicator on behalf of his beleaguered nation and a paragon of courage in adversity. However, he does not have the key to the war chest and the passcode for arsenals of necessary weapons. Nor does he control the flow of electronic and space-based intelligence gathering that plays a crucial role in modern warfare.

[T]he Western democracies will soon face the need to put their armaments industries in high gear. And that means a massive increase in military budgets. Yet, most NATO members are still proceeding with old plans to reduce the size of their armed forces and switch arms production from what is needed in a classical war, such as the one we witness in Ukraine, to warfare in cyberspace or outer space.

It is time for everyone to realize that the war to destroy Ukraine is not a sideshow. This is not a low-intensity war in which one is involved only vicariously. True, it’s Ukrainian blood that is shed on the battlefield. But citizens of almost all other countries also pay a price in galloping inflation, widespread shortages and a growing threat to security.

It is time for NATO, the EU and allies to move beyond the welcome, though largely symbolic, show of unity through symbolic gestures and develop a common analysis of what is involved and what needs to be done to curb Putin. And that would require a mechanism for unified overall political leadership, with Zelensky as field commander.

As a shorthand phrase “the war in Ukraine” may please headline writers and politicians keen on facile simplifications. The phrase gives the impression that the war is going on in a remote place called Ukraine and only tangentially affects the rest of the world. The rest of the world is divided into three categories.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/its_not_just_about_taiwan.html

“China’s goal is not just to dominate the world, but to reduce the rest of us to subservience.” With that terrifying projection, China expert Steven Mosher has been trying to rouse America from its complacency and caution the Biden administration over its appeasement of the Red Dragon. He reads clear and present danger in a leaked video showing Chinese military commanders discussing a 90-day countdown to a Taiwan invasion. Mosher says the video is authentic, and that the Biden administration’s mixed signals on Taiwan smack of a fecklessness that will only embolden China.

Other experts, too, warn of the government’s “strategic ambiguity” toward China as the “reunification” rhetoric with Taiwan has become more aggressive.  There is a growing fear that Chinese President Xi Jinping, having suffered few consequences for his forays into the South China Sea and his crackdown in Hong Kong, will be emboldened to take on U.S. allies and attack American assets.  On July 6th, it was announced that China would join Russia and Iran in war drills in our hemisphere, a clear threat to the security of the United States.

Mosher is no armchair theorizer. He’s fluent in Chinese and was the first American social scientist to visit China, as early as 1979. He is the author of Bully of Asia:  Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order, an overview of China’s ambitions in South Asia. He has served in the Navy, and is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China (CPDC), an independent task-force based in Washington, D.C.  Mosher’s assessment on Taiwan was presented recently on the Securing America podcast, anchored by Center for Security Policy (CSP) founder Frank Gaffney.